Strategic Pillars / Staff and Community

DCU Strategy - Value and Develop Our Staff Community

DCU Strategy 2023-2028

Transformation For An Unscripted Future

Value and Develop Our Staff and Community

Introduction

Gareth Yore

Director of HR

At DCU, the well-being and development of our staff community has always been a key priority. This University is known for its ‘People First’ approach and its collegial and collaborative culture.

All of this is reflected in this pillar’s strategic commitment to ‘value and develop our Staff Community’. The strategy lays out a range of goals and actions to ensure that DCU is a positive and encouraging workplace where staff can reach their full potential.

Over the next five years, our goal is to further strengthen staff culture and community, while ensuring that staff have every opportunity to enhance their capabilities and performance. We will renew the ‘Our DCU’ initiative to ensure a more connected staff community.

We will ensure that all staff members have the chance to develop their skills and talent and have a chance to advance within the University structures and to perform to the highest standards in service of our stakeholders. In order for this to happen we will commit to the broader EDI principles of the Athena Swan Charter and ensure everyone has a voice, can flourish and feel that they belong.

Strategic Priorities

1. Renew

Shows two members of female staff at a staff event in DCU

Renewing ‘Our DCU' plan to enhance our staff culture, community and campus experience where staff and students connect and thrive.

2. Support

Supporting talent development, succession planning, staff capabilities and collective performance

3. Deliver

Shows DCU staff and AsIAm's Adam Harris at launch of Phase 2 of DCU Autism Friendly University

Delivering on our EDI priorities, the Athena Swan Charter, and ensure that everyone has a voice, can flourish and feels that they belong in the context of building ESG capability.

4. Service

Further enhancing the service we provide to our stakeholders with a view to improving the staff and student experience.

Our Drivers

Collective Leadership

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Collective Leadership is the idea of ‘leading where you are’.

In DCU, leadership is not confined to management roles but is diffuse and accessible to all.

People at all levels across DCU are empowered to identify opportunities, pursue new ideas, convince colleagues and management and bring their ideas to fruition, by taking them through the relevant approval processes.

This video illustrates collective leadership in action.

It highlights the innovative work of DCU's Institute of Education to equip student teachers with the skills to nurture a passion for STEM in their future students such as the STEM Teacher Internship Programme (STint), the Naughton Family Chair in STEM Education, and research on game-based learning.

Innovation, Creativity & Enterprise (ICE)

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Innovation, Creativity & Enterprise (ICE) is the DCU inclusive concept of innovation, which encompasses Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise.

ICE aims to move away from the over-association of ‘innovation’ with research commercialisation and STEM areas and to ensure that the innovation, creativity and enterprise taking place across the University and in all disciplines, is valued and visible.

The DCU ICE initiati8ve provides a locus to showcase and make visible the myriad activities across the University, which fall into this area.

A major focus of ICE is to support student enterprise activities for students from all faculties and programmes, growing the concepts of ‘innovation’, ‘creativity’ and ‘enterprise’ amongst all students from all programmes but also providing a pathway for them to turn ideas into products and services.

In this video, Dr Ciarán Dunne, Director of Transversal Skill, talks about how DCU strives to 'promote authentic opportunities for our students to shape, refine and grow thier creative ideas into impactful and scalable innovations'.

Sustainable Development

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DCU seeks to embed a sustainability ethos that will underpin all our activities and ensure sustainability in all areas of our operation – Economic, Climate, Social, Financial and Staffing.

We appreciate how critical it is to build ESG capacity across all areas of the University, and this will inform all strategic activity we conduct and will become embedded in the DCU psyche.

This video talks about the development of the U on DCU's Glasnevin campus, which was opened in 2018. Thousands of students use the centre every day, and it's also home to the 130 clubs and societies, the Student Leadership and Life Skills Centre, and a host of events.

Agility

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Agility is the ability of an organization to renew itself, adapt, change quickly, and succeed in a rapidly changing, ambiguous, turbulent environment.

Notwithstanding our resilient response to the challenges of the pandemic, we recognise that change and uncertainty have become enduring forces and we wish to position the University to be better able to anticipate and flourish in adverse circumstances, rather than to be reactive and taken unawares.

Therefore a key characteristic going forward will be scenario planning and modelling so that we continue to be aware of and well placed to manage potential challenges.